


Bedroom Songs

by a_classic_fool



Category: Do No Harm (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Biting, Breathplay, Butt Plugs, Consent Issues, Dom Vanessa, Dom/sub, Expected Autistic Ruben, F/M, Impact Play, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Multi, Panic Attacks, Past Sexual Assault, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Scratching, Strap-Ons, Sub Ruben, Sub-ish Usnavi, Threesome - F/M/M, Unexpected Ace Spectrum Ruben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-11-19 14:41:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11315538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_classic_fool/pseuds/a_classic_fool
Summary: Vanessa, Ruben, Usnavi, and kink, over the years.





	1. Vanessa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I’ve never written porn before, largely because I have the worst time figuring out if something is hot when I’m writing it myself, so hopefully this works. Also, I’m very much a sub, so dom-space and dom-drop are hard for me to get my head around — I’m working off what past partners have told me, so hopefully that works as well.

Vanessa’s eighteen and she’s in the park, backed up against the post of the swingset. The sky is inky and stained with the lights of the city and a boy whose name she doesn’t know has his hands on her waist and his mouth on her neck. She met him a few hours earlier at the club and it’s easy, like this, to let the motion of his body against hers take up the excess energy that’s burning beneath her skin. She’s felt like this for so long now, like her whole self is being flooded by a constant current and charge. If she closes her eyes she can imagine that the creak of the joints of the swingset is the screech of the brakes of a train, that the low distant rumble of cars in the background is the traffic of the streets downtown. 

The boy’s kissing comes in surges. He pauses for breath and presses forward against her again and she knows that later, long after they’ve said goodbye, she’ll fall asleep with the roll and rise of his movement lingering in her body, whether she wants it there or not. She digs her fingers into his hips harder than she means to and suddenly his hands have left her waist and are gripping her wrists, pinning them to the post behind her. She can feel him smiling against her lips. 

“Is that okay?” he whispers. She nods, although she’s not entirely sure that it is.

“I like it rough too,” he says, and he rubs his thumb in circles over the thin skin on the inside of her right wrist. He moans quietly into her mouth and it’s like he thinks that they now share something important. Vanessa doesn’t want to share much of anything with this boy. She doesn’t even want to share her name.

The longer they continue the rougher he gets. Eventually he lets go of her wrists and his nails drag up and down her arms and across the skin of her lower back as he slides his hands under her shirt. When his nails rake back across the marks he’s already made it burns, a bright flash that explodes and lingers like closing your eyes after looking at a bright light, and Vanessa doesn’t know if she likes it or not. There’s a certain relief in the way that the electricity under her skin escapes with each angry red scratch mark but, at the same time, she feels like he’s trying to claim her, to brand her, to tie her to this post and keep her there.

As he sucks her lower lip between his teeth and bites down hard, his fingers come to rest loosely around her throat. The pain in her lip is sharp and surprising and the feeling of fingertips hovering over her windpipe sends a shudder through her whole body. She grabs his arm, pulls his hand away from her neck. 

She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “ _No_.”

The boy drops his forehead to rest against hers and pants, his breath hot and close and claustrophobic. His mouth his no longer touching hers and she turns away so that his head jerks on his neck as it loses its resting place. He straightens up and lets go of her entirely.

“Sorry,” he says, inadequately. She wriggles out from between him and the post of the swingset, gathers her purse in her arms.

“Let’s go,” she says.

She takes the train home, skin itching for a shower. She sits on the bathroom counter for a long while after she’s done, wrapped in her towel and methodically wringing out her hair over the sink. She doesn’t feel dirty, or particularly upset — the boy stopped, he walked her to the train station, everything turned out fine. But she’s angry nonetheless, not at him so much as at every boy who’s touched her and demanded with his touch that she be what he wanted her to be.

She remembers a white boy who kissed her when she was sixteen and said “ _Caliente_ ” over and over while he tried to pull her hair. He didn’t speak a word of Spanish but that one.

She remembers her first and only high school boyfriend and thinks of the way he’d ask for a lap dance and then hold the back of her head while she blew him, thrust into her throat until her eyes watered.

Vanessa knows the way grown men whistle when she walks down the street, the way their eyes track her like she’s prey. She knows, and she’s known for a long time, what they’re imagining, knows that they want her fierce until they get her undressed and then they want her tame. That then she’s supposed to drop to her knees.

Vanessa has no plans to drop to her knees for anyone.

*** 

Vanessa’s nineteen and, in the apartment above the bodega, Usnavi is undressing for the first time. He’s pushing the hem of her tank top up as high as it will go before it catches on her arms and he tugs, very gently. He lets his hands fall to her waist while she pulls the shirt off over her head and the look in his eyes when he sees her skin is like worship.

They’re kneeling on Usnavi’s bed, facing one another, and Usnavi looks like he’s vibrating, like his entire body is trembling with how much he needs to touch her. Usually that kind of naked want would disgust her but she’s fairly sure that she’s never been more turned on in her life than she is right now.

Vanessa takes pity on Usnavi and undoes the clasp of her bra herself, leans back against the headboard while Usnavi, in nothing but his boxers, straddles her and lowers his mouth to suck on her nipple. He flicks his tongue experimentally and Vanessa moans, runs her hands over the smooth skin of Usnavi’s back and shoulders.

Wondering if she could come from his mouth on her breast alone, Vanessa reaches down to tug at the waistband of his boxers.

“I want you naked. Take these off,” she says, sliding a hand between his legs to cup his cock. He’s already hard and he whimpers, high and needy, and stops playing with her nipples so he can pull the boxers off and kick them to the floor. Vanessa, watching him and feeling her heartbeat everywhere at once, undoes the zip of her skirt and slides it off too.

Usnavi naked is a beautiful thing and Vanessa doubts she’ll ever get tired of it. He’s still kneeling, straddling her, and she leans further back to look up at him, to run her hands over his thighs and hips.

“Lube,” she says.

“I don’t — ”

“Shh. It’s okay. It’s in my purse.”

Her purse is on the floor by the bed and Usnavi leans over and rummages around in it, returning with a plastic bottle in his hand. Vanessa takes it and gestures for him to sit on her lap, facing her. She slicks her palm and wraps it around his cock, letting her hand slide up and down along his length. His head falls forward and his hands are clutching at her shoulders.

“Oh god,” he says. “ _Fuck_ , Vanessa, _please_.”

“Please what, Usnavi?” she says, tipping his chin up with her free hand to look him in the eye. She keeps working him, speeding up slightly, and the sounds he makes are devastating. He’s rolling his hips, thrusting up into her hand, and he’s struggling to keep his eyes open.

“I just want — I need to make you feel good, please, I have to, I _need_ to, please.”

“How do you want to do that, Usnavi?”

“Let me go down on you. _Please_ , let me.”

No one has ever begged Vanessa for anything before and she’s dizzy with it, it’s going to her head and she has never wanted Usnavi more than she wants him now. 

“Yes,” she manages, and he climbs off her lap to let her lie down and spread her legs. He settles himself between them, still so hard it must hurt, and pulls her dampened panties off with trembling fingers. He runs his hands over her inner thighs, letting his nails trail across her skin, and she shivers.

“Go on,” she says, through gritted teeth. “Make me feel good.”

Usnavi whimpers again and sets his mouth to her clit, working his tongue around it before sliding his mouth down and pressing his tongue inside her. She runs a hand through his hair and whispers praise under her breath, guiding him until he’s hitting all the right places.

“Good,” she tells him, almost gasping, almost choking on the words. “Good. You’re so good, Usnavi, you learn so fast.”

He looks up at her through his eyelashes, lips parted and reddened, and something low in her stomach contorts. It’s like arousal but it goes deeper, somehow, settles and expands to fill her whole chest. This is a man who trusts her, who wants what she will give and not what she will let him take. He’s giving her a gift, she thinks, he’s putting himself bare and raw in her hands and she loves it, she loves him, she can’t _think_ anymore.

Usnavi breaks eye contact and slides two fingers inside her, crooking them upwards and stroking with a steady, incorrigible rhythm. Vanessa’s coming before she can warn him.

That night Usnavi falls asleep in record time, curled up into a ball against her side with his mouth hanging slightly open, but Vanessa lies on her back, staring at the ceiling. Her whole body is alive and dancing with energy and every sound, every touch, every taste is amplified. The rustle of the sheets as Usnavi shifts next to her, the hiss of the wind against the fire escape outside, the distant slam of a car door — it’s heady and electric and she can’t come down. She remembers feeling like this when she was younger, when she was a teenager, but this is different. She knows where she’s going now.

And she also knows, somewhere deep in her gut, that she could take Usnavi as far as he wanted to go and still want to go farther. _Please_ , he’d told her, over and over, and she wants more.

***

Vanessa’s twenty and Ruben is on his back in her bed, his legs in their jeans falling open. By now, they’ve fucked on their own a few times, and today Ruben’s mood seems different in a way she can’t quite identify.

“What do you want?” she asks him, over and over, and he can’t seem to find the words to tell her. She’s sitting next to him and he reaches for parts of her body and runs his hands over them, eyes wide and questioning. Vanessa wants to answer but she doesn’t know what he’s asking.

Eventually, Vanessa lies down, curls up against his side, and cups his cheek. She turns his head towards hers and brings their mouths together, throws a leg over his hips and presses herself as close to him as she can get, doing her best to force their bodies into the same physical space. It’s not the first time she’s wanted the edges of her body to overlap with the edges of his and Ruben makes a high-pitched whimpering sound at the contact.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Vanessa,” he says, so quietly that she almost misses it. “Can you — put pressure on me?”

She sits up and looks down at his face, which is vulnerable and split open with fear and want. “Pressure?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says, voice still soft. “Your weight on me feels good.”

Vanessa nods and shifts so she’s lying on top of him, one hand on either side of his head so she can arch up and see his face. “Like that?”

Ruben’s eyes fall closed and ne nods. His breathing evens and he puts his arms around her waist, hands sliding down to palm her ass.

Vanessa feels Ruben’s hips shift and buck minutely underneath her and she’s never seen him quite like this, relaxing into what he wants.

“Ruben,” she whispers, lowering her head so she can nose and kiss at his jawline. “What else?”

“What else — ?”

“You can tell me what you want. Whatever you want.”

Ruben’s hands clench on her ass and she feels him getting hard. “I don’t want to sound stupid.”

Vanessa grinds down on him and he makes a noise somewhere between a whimper and a hiss, his eyes squeezing even tighter shut. “You won’t,” she says. “I’ll never think you’re stupid. You don’t have to hold back.”

“I want you to hold me down. I want you to hurt me. I don’t want to be in charge.” It all comes out in one breath.

Vanessa tries to ignore the twist of desire that goes shooting through her. “And that won’t, um — remind you of him?”

“It might,” whispers Ruben. “But I’ve always wanted this. And it’s you, and I trust you, and I just want — I want my mind to quiet down for a while. I want someone else to make decisions.”

This time, Vanessa doesn’t ignore the fire that’s spreading throughout her entire body. Her mouth is dry and and the bottom drops out of her stomach and she rolls her hips downwards as hard as she can, feeling the line of Ruben’s cock against her clit. They’re both wearing so many clothes, too many clothes, and they’re both panting a little now, their noses pressed against one other’s jaws and their lips brushing against one another’s lips.

 _Pull yourself together_ , Vanessa tells herself. _You’re in charge. Act like it._

“What do you like?” she asks him. Her voice is thick and constricted.

“Pain,” he whispers back. “And pressure. You can ask me to do things, just don’t give orders.”

Vanessa nods. She rolls off him and situates herself so she’s sitting next to him and watching his face as intently as she’s ever done. “What do you want to use as a safeword?”

“Red. I’ll tell you if I’m red or yellow or green.”

“Can you take off your pants for me, Ruben? You can leave your underwear on.”

Ruben nods and reaches down to undo the buttons and zips.

“Undress me?” she asks, once he’s done.

Ruben sits up and slides her shirt and shorts off. He undoes her bra in one motion, tosses it to the floor, and leans his head forward to suck at her nipple. She puts a hand on his forehead.

“Not yet,” she says. “I’ll tell you when I want you to touch me.”

Ruben nods and sits back, hands palming his cock through his boxers and pupils blown, and even despite his heavy breathing he looks so much calmer than normal.

“Can you turn around for me? Stay sitting. Just turn your back to me.”

Ruben obeys immediately, doesn’t hesitate or think or pause. Vanessa’s surprised — Ruben is usually so reserved during sex, so far in his head. Usually he waits until he’s sure everything is okay, apologizes for his own pleasure, searches for her eyes before he moves to make sure his movement is allowed. He’s not apologizing now.

Vanessa kneels behind Ruben and runs her nails up and down his spine, keeping the pressure light and teasing at first. He shivers with every pass, shifting and rolling his hips, and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Then, without warning, she sinks her nails into his skin, scratching down his back in a hard, vicious stroke. He moans and his head falls back, exposing his throat.

“ _Vanessa_ ,” he says.

“Shh, Ruben. I’ve got you.”

She continues to run her nails lightly up his spine and then hard back down, making a spiderweb of red lines that never break the skin. She can see Ruben straining to keep still, trying alternately not to pull away from her and not to push back into her hand, and when his panting has turned to gasping, she stops. She presses kisses along the lines her nails have left, sliding her arms around his waist and resting her hands on his thighs, and waits for him to speak.

“Tell me your color, Ruben,” she says, when he doesn’t say anything.

“Green,” he says. He takes a long time to answer, as though his words are swimming to the surface of a very deep lake. “Vanessa, please, I can take more.”

He’s shaking and Vanessa rubs her hands up and down his arms. It’s as though she’s watching herself touch him from somewhere very high up, as though she understands and can predict every move each of them is going to make before they make it. Her mind is feels sharp and precise and every single part of her is focused on Ruben, on the minute shifts of his body, the expressions that blow across his face like clouds.

“Can you lie down?” she asks. “On your stomach.”

Ruben moves as though through water, as though his body is heavy and weighted, each muscle taking an age to contract and release. When his gaze meets hers, his eyes are heavy-lidded and half-closed and it’s as though he’s looking past her and through her at the same time, finding something beautiful in her face that she’s never seen before. For a moment, she wants to cry, and something about it leaves a bright, sweet taste in her mouth.

When he’s situated on his stomach, Vanessa takes both of his wrists in her hand and pins them above his head.

“I’m going to hurt you now,” she says. “Is that okay?”

Ruben makes a moaning noise into the pillow.

“I need to hear a yes or a no, Ruben.”

“ _Yes_. Yes.”

“Good boy,” Vanessa says, shocked at how much it turns her on to say it. Ruben grinds his hips down desperately into the bed beneath him.

“Say it again,” he says.

“Good boy,” Vanessa repeats. “You’re such a good boy, Ruben. You’re doing so well. You’re making me so proud.”

Ruben moans in earnest now and Vanessa straddles his hips and sets her teeth into the meat of his shoulder, biting down and feeling her teeth grinding against the muscle. Keeping her jaw tight, she sucks on the skin, leaving a mark she knows will be deep and brilliant as a jewel, a constant reminder of the way they’ve become one person like this. She wants to paint his entire body with bruises, wants to use his skin as a canvas so that no one will be able to look at him without knowing that this part of him belongs to her, that if they hurt him she’ll kill them. She imagines Ruben wincing every time he puts a shirt on, every time he showers or wears his backpack, and she doesn’t understand what this is doing to her. No one has ever trusted her quite like this.

Vanessa leaves a messy line of bruises across Ruben’s upper back, arcing from one shoulder to the other, and everything is on fire. The heat coming from Ruben’s body is almost unbearable and she knows, somehow, that with every touch, with every moment of pain he allows her to cause him, the branches of lightning crackling through her become clearer, more distinct from one another. Before, there was always a constant blanket of static under her skin, everywhere at once and nowhere, but now there’s a clear path that begins at her heart and ends at the places where her fingertips touch Ruben.

At some point she’s let go of Ruben’s wrists and his hands are clenched in fists around the sheets on either side of his head. As she begins leaving her last mark, she realizes Ruben’s crying.

Vanessa climbs off him and lies down next to him, wiping the tears from his cheek with her thumb. 

“ _Ruben_ ,” she says. “Ruben. Talk to me. Are you okay?”

Ruben nods. His fists have unclenched but there are still tears in eyes. He’s silent and words seem just out of his reach.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” he says eventually. “Nothing bad. Nothing’s wrong.”

“You’re crying.”

“I know.”

“I mean, what — why?”

“It just — there was so much. I didn’t have to be in control and there was just so _much_.” 

She stays silent for what feels like a long time. “What do you need?” she asks finally.

Ruben rolls onto his side so he’s curled into a loose ball facing her, knees drawn up towards his chest. “I need to touch you. Please let me touch you.”

Vanessa is indescribably relieved. All she wants to do is wrap her arms around Ruben, listen to his heartbeat and find their way out of this deep, quiet place together. She grabs a blanket from the bottom of the bed and, pulling it up over the both of them as she goes, wriggles closer to him until their legs entwine. She drapes one arm over his waist, rubbing circles up and down his back with the palm of her hand.

“Do you need to come?” she asks, looking down. He’s still hard, although it’s subsiding, and his face and upper chest are still bright and flushed.

He shakes his head. “This was enough,” he says.

She buries her face into his chest and presses a kiss into to the dip between his collarbones. “Me too,” she says, and hopes he understands.

They fall asleep like that, heads together and bodies curving towards each other like a painting, and Vanessa wakes when the first whispers of dawn draw strange shapes on the floor beneath the window. The light in the room is an odd half-light, gray and slanted, and the suspended quiet of morning hovers on the brink of the day, on the precipice of noise. It’s a different place than the one they went to sleep in and a different place still than the one they’ll wake up to when the sun rises.

She’s thirsty and Ruben is fast asleep, his eyelashes smudgy shadows against his cheekbones. Vanessa’s learned to identify the signs of a nightmare and tonight, the blanket hasn’t snarled around his waist, he isn’t sweating, his forehead is smooth and untroubled. She tries to slide out of the circle of his arms and creep towards the edge of the bed but as soon as she begins to move, Ruben reaches for her, catching her wrist.

“No,” he says, voice almost unintelligible with the weight of the night. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me.”

Vanessa resigns herself to thirst and settles back down. “Okay,” she whispers. His eyes are still closed and she kisses each eyelid with the reverence of someone pressing their lips to a holy relic. “I’ll stay.”

***

Vanessa’s twenty-one and she’s never fucked up like this before. Ruben’s kneeling in front of the toilet, making awful gasping sounds, and she’s sitting on the edge of the bathtub, making a concerted effort not to touch him. Every now and then she makes ineffective _shh-_ ing noises, like Ruben is a child she’s trying to coax to sleep.

She knows she can’t touch him because a half an hour ago, when she tried to put a hand on his shoulder and wipe the sweat off his forehead, he screamed and retreated into the corner of the bathroom, staring at something she couldn’t see and begging her not to hurt him. The thought of it makes her want to be sick as well and she feels dangerous and dirty — she pushed Ruben too far, asked him to go to places she shouldn’t have asked him to go, took advantage of the completeness with which he puts himself into her hands.

Vanessa has no practice with anything like this. She wants to call Usnavi and ask him to come over and help, but it’s one in the morning and she knows that making the trek to her apartment won’t stop him waking up early and opening the store. She’s an adult, and it’s her fault Ruben is a mess like this, and she has to fix it. You fix what you break. She knows this. 

They sit together in the bathroom for hours. At two in the morning, Vanessa slips into the kitchen to get a glass from the cupboard and fills it with water, setting it down wordlessly on the floor next to Ruben. At two-thirty in the morning, Ruben seems to notice that it’s there and takes a sip of the water. At three in the morning, Ruben curls up into a ball on the floor, no longer retching. Vanessa still doesn’t touch him and every minute that passes hurts her in a deep and fundamental kind of way, gouges at the core of her like a chisel, chipping away and leaving her raw and bare.

Vanessa’s not Usnavi or Nina. She can’t spin comfort from words, she doesn’t know how to talk until she’s made something safe. Her whole life she’s expressed her heart with her hands, her hips, her mouth — a kiss on the forehead for pride, a hand on the shoulder for comfort, a dance at dawn for love. Now she is helpless and frozen as a statue.

Finally, at three-thirty in the morning, Ruben uncoils and pushes himself up against the wall until he’s sitting. He doesn’t meet her eyes but he reaches for her hand and she clings to it without speaking. Somehow it makes the empty place in her yawn wider and the gap between them stretch into something that feels insurmountable.

“I wanna go to sleep,” says Ruben, hoarse and rough, at four in the morning. He hasn’t moved from his position against the wall but he peels himself off it now, inches across the floor until he’s tucked himself into her side. He rests his forehead against her shoulder and doesn’t let go of her hand.

“Okay,” Vanessa says, taking his other hand and helping him to his feet. She thinks she hears one of his knees pop.

He leans on her until they get back to the bed and then stands there as though he’s forgotten what to do. She pushes on his shoulders as gently as she can and he sits down heavily, looking around him with a lost expression. Vanessa reaches over him to unsnarl the sheets and straighten the blankets and eventually he lies down, pulling the covers up to his neck. She climbs in behind him and curves her body to match the curve of his. Usually this is comforting, after a scene, usually this is enough, but she still feels like someone took her apart and put her back together all wrong.

“I couldn’t fix it,” she whispers to him, as he’s falling asleep in her arms. The next day is a Sunday and they can sleep in as late as they want.

He mutters something, his voice thick from exhaustion and from his raw throat. The uptick at the end makes Vanessa think it’s a question.

“I hurt you and I couldn’t do anything about it,” she says.

Ruben wriggles around so he’s facing her, but his eyes are still closed. He snakes his arms around her waist and nestles against her so that his face is essentially buried in her neck.

“You didn’t hurt me.”

She stays silent, and he goes on, “It just happens. You couldn’t have known.”

She strokes Ruben’s hair and once the repetitive motion of it has lulled him to sleep, she stares into the blackness of the room around her. There’s a thin sliver of moonlight coming in between the slats of the blinds and it shines across the side of Ruben’s face, catching on the places where the black of his hair has lightened in the sun and on the stubble growing in along his jawline.

The center of her chest feels hollow and empty and she needs to talk to Usnavi or she’s going to split open and spill out and dissolve. She waits until Ruben eventually gets too warm and rolls over, turning his back to her, and then she slides out of bed. She grabs her phone from the bedside table and takes it with her into the bathroom. To prevent Ruben overhearing what she needs to say, she runs the water and lets the sound of it splashing into the sink drown out her voice.

“What’s wrong?” Usnavi says when he picks up, sounding panicked. Vanessa immediately feels even guiltier than she felt before.

“I fucked up,” she says, and she starts to cry. She didn’t cry when Ruben’s flashback started, she didn’t cry while Ruben was on the bathroom floor, she didn’t cry while they fell asleep, but now she can’t seem to stop crying, tears running down her face and down her neck and pooling at her collarbones. Vanessa isn’t a weepy person — bottling it up and sitting in silence is more her style — and she doesn’t understand the total and utter despair she’s feeling now, like nothing has ever been worse than this and nothing will ever get better from here.

Usnavi stays on the line and whispers to her in Spanish between sobs. He’s clearly exhausted — Vanessa thinks about the soft, blue-black darkness of his room at night, about the velvety pressure of the quiet there — and she tries to tell him he can just hang up and go to bed.

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” she manages, trying to mop up her face with a handful of toilet paper. “I shouldn’t have, you need to sleep, you have to work, I’m _sorry_." 

“ _Querida_ ,” he says. “I’m glad you called me. You can always call me. You know that.”

Vanessa nods before realizing he can’t see her.

“Wanna tell me what happened?” Usnavi says.

“Was doing a scene with Ruben and I fucked up.”

“What d’you mean?”

“We just — we went too far. I was choking him and hitting him and he said that’s what he wanted, he said he was green, and then it all just fell apart.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“Usnavi,” she chokes. “What if he’s — what if he’s punishing himself or reliving everything that happened and I’m letting him, what if I’m making it worse? We don’t even know everything that _did_ happen, what if this isn’t about making him feel good and he just doesn’t think he’s worth anything else? What am I _doing_ to him?”

“Vanessa,” says Usnavi. “Vanessa, _mi amor, luz de mi vida,_ he’s an adult. You gotta trust him to know what he wants.” When Vanessa doesn’t say anything, he goes on, “We gotta respect him enough to let him make his own choices, you know? It’s just — what you two do together is real shit. It’s gonna get messy sometimes.”

“I’m scared I’m as bad as he is.”

“As bad as Ruben?” Usnavi sounds perplexed.

“No,” says Vanessa. “As bad as Ian.”

From the other end of the line comes the unmistakable sound of the floorboards beside Usnavi’s bed creaking and then the rasp of Usnavi opening a dresser drawer. “I’m coming over,” he says.

Vanessa’s heart does an odd somersault. She wants Usnavi there so much, wants someone to hold her and do for her what she doesn’t have the energy to do for herself right now, but it’s asking too much and she tells him so.

“Well,” he says, “you’re not asking, I’m offering. Sonny’ll open today. Or I’ll open late. I don’t care.”

“We can’t afford to open late,” she says, and neither of them mention the fact that she’s just said _we_. “The money’s too tight.”

“I don’t care,” he says again. “I need to be there.” And before Vanessa can protest, Usnavi adds, “I love you, I’m on my way, hold tight,” and hangs up the phone.

A while later, after Vanessa has climbed back into bed and somehow managed not to wake Ruben up, she hears the click of the front door and the distinctive rhythm of Usnavi’s footsteps. The mattress dips behind her and Usnavi curls up against her back, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her hair, her neck, her shoulder.

“I got you,” he says.

Ruben stirs at the sound of Usnavi’s voice, his eyes cracking open fractionally to look for the source of the noise.

“I got you too,” Usnavi tells him, and reaches out over Vanessa to tuck a strand of Ruben’s hair behind his ear. Ruben makes a contented noise and settles back down.  

“Sleep,” Usnavi whispers into Vanessa’s ear. “We’ve got all morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on Tumblr at [a-classic-fool](https://a-classic-fool.tumblr.com/) and I don't bite unless asked, so feel free to come yell about these nerds with me! Also, like most writers, I'm embarrassingly easily motivated by comments.


	2. Ruben

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I feel the need to add a disclaimer to this one — be safe with your kink, y’all. If alcohol is involved, consent isn’t and cannot be a thing. Aftercare, especially pre-negotiated aftercare, will help with sub drop — don’t abandon your partner after a scene without talking about it first. Never hit your partner’s lower back/kidney area, or their stomach (no one in this fic does that, but it’s worth mentioning). Be careful hitting with fists (rather than open palms) — fists won’t sting as much but fists can do tissue damage. Don’t slap your partner in the face if their mouth is open (again, not a thing that happens here). Be so so careful with breathplay — I know a lot of people who just straight up won’t do it or teach it. And, as always, don’t use fanfic as a primer on how to be safe when kinking it up, how to cope healthily with trauma, or how to negotiate the intersections of the two.

Ruben’s nineteen and the polyester of the comforter makes a plasticky rustling sound as he pushes himself up against the cinderblock wall behind him. His dorm room is neat and private, decorated with photographs of his family and a Puerto Rican flag and a handful of posters stuck to the wall with sandwiches of painter’s tape, and he’s uncomfortable sharing it, even with Emily.

Emily is wicked smart and her eyes crinkle at the corners when she smiles and the curves of her hips make the bottom of Ruben’s stomach drop out. She has a devastating way of looking at him from behind the curls that fall in her face when she bends over a desk, a devastating way of raising her eyebrows and blinking long and slow and making him go tongue-tied and stupid, but partnering with her in OChem was easy and relaxing enough to convince Ruben to ask her for coffee, and coffee was easy enough to convince him to ask her to dinner, and now here they are, in differing states of undress, facing one another on Ruben’s twin bed. 

So far, Ruben’s done everything he knows he’s supposed to do — he turned off the overhead light and left the room to be illuminated by a lamp, he kissed her for what seemed like an appropriate amount of time, he rested his hands at her waist when their mouths met and pulled her closer to him as their kissing deepened. After several long minutes, during which Ruben continued to monitor his reactions — _Do I like this? Is this working? Do I want this? How do I tell?_ — he guided her to the bed and backed her up against it until her knees hit the edge and she sat down.

Now, Ruben’s maneuvered them so he’s sitting against the headboard and he’s pulled her onto his lap so that she’s straddling his hips and grinding down against his cock, which is semi-hard just from the contact but not entirely interested. He’s perplexed. He’s never hooked up with anyone before, never really done anything beyond tentative, sloppy kisses at the end of uncomfortable dates, and he expected, when he brought Emily here, that once they started, something primal would happen. He expected to start kissing her and then be unable to stop, to feel the kind of urgency that would make him want to strip her clothes off and fuck her stupid into the mattress.

Instead, he finds that he likes kissing largely for the sensation. It feels _nice_ , the repetitive slide of lips against lips, the reassuring pressure of someone else’s body pressing firmly into his own, and it makes him calm more than it makes him desperate. He wishes she’d stop grinding and lie down beside him and let him learn the geometry of her face with his fingertips.

Emily stops kissing him to pluck at the hem of his shirt.

“Can I — ?” she asks, and he nods. He raises his arms over his head so she can pull the shirt off and then she leans into him again, lowering her mouth to his neck. As she kisses along his jaw, her teeth grind hard against the skin and the pain is immediate and electric.

“Oh, fuck, sorry,” she pants, touching the damaged skin with a calloused fingertip.

“No,” says Ruben. “No, it’s okay.”

And it is, surprisingly. The pain, combined with the weight of her leaning against him and pressing him into the wall, felt good, made his breath stutter and his stomach twist for the first time tonight.

“Okay,” she says, and she goes back to kissing him, but it’s soft again. He raises his hands to her shoulders and pushes very gently until she disengages and looks at him, her lips damp and red. She grins wide.

“Yeah?” she asks.  

Ruben doesn’t know how to tell her that what he would like her to do is bite him again. That picturing her tying his wrists to the bedposts and leaving deep bruises all over his neck is making his cock twitch treacherously.

“What do you want?” he asks eventually. “How can I, uh — how can I make you feel good?”

“I want whatever you want. I want you to do whatever you want to me,” she says. It makes his brain freeze and his body go rigid and he thinks he’s supposed to be turned on by it but he’s decidedly not. Instead, he feels like he’s hit a scratch on a record and now he’s stuttering, back and forth, to a percussive, glitchy beat.

Ruben imagines that at this point, he’s supposed to flip her over so that he’s on top her, spread her legs, grind against her, have his way with her. She’s offering him exactly what he’s supposed to want and he wills his body to respond.

It doesn’t.

And so, in this terrifying absence of reaction, he does to her what he wishes she’d do to him — pins her to the bed, bites the tender flesh of her inner thighs until she’s screaming, holds her wrists tight together in his hand. _You’re so beautiful,_ he tells her. _You’re so good. So good, so good, so good._

***

Ruben’s twenty-one and he doesn’t need to have been to a frat party before to know that he already hates it. It’s dark but for a cheap disco ball someone’s tied to the ceiling fan and the music is loud and electronic. It makes the whole house vibrate and Ruben can hear it in his entire body. He can’t think around the space it takes up in his head.

Ruben, having sat on the porch for as long as possible before venturing inside, checks his phone for texts. His friend is supposed to meet him and she’s not here yet and he’s stressed, he’s twitchy, he wants to go home. He makes his way through the house, passing tables piled with bottles of alcohol and couples locked together at the mouth or the hips, and eventually finds what must be the main room. It’s louder than the others, boasting as it does an impressive set of speakers, and a tangle of people are clustered in the middle where the furniture has been pushed aside. There’s tequila on a nearby coffee table and Ruben pours more than he intended into a plastic cup, downing it in one.

“You okay there?” says a voice, and Ruben turns to see that a tall, broad-chested boy has appeared beside him. The boy’s eyes seem to twinkle, even in the dark, but Ruben can feel the warmth of the alcohol beginning to spread from his stomach to his chest so maybe he’s just imagining that. 

“I’m good,” Ruben answers uselessly, transferring his cup from hand to hand for something to do.

“Glad to hear it,” says the boy, and steps into Ruben’s personal space. He’s a lot bigger than Ruben, his presence a lot more commanding, and he’s smiling in a cocky, self-assured way that makes Ruben go weak at the knees. The boy reaches out and trails the back of his hand along Ruben’s cheekbone.

Ruben lets himself be pulled by the hand into the nearest bathroom, which is littered with half-empty cups and more than one condom wrapper. The tequila works fast on his empty stomach and his head feels a little loose on his neck, his smile a little easier than normal. The bathroom smells like vodka and hand soap and when Ruben braces himself against the counter, he finds that his hand sticks to the granite.

The boy, who’s leaning casually against the wall, reaches out and cups a hand around the back of Ruben’s neck, pulling Ruben tight against his chest and bringing their mouths together in a rough, bruising kiss. Ruben, already loose-limbed and boneless, feels himself melt even further into the boy’s body, lets the boy’s hands find his ass and squeeze. Their hips meet and the pressure feels so good, the forcefulness feels so good, Ruben feels split open and pinned down and it scares him how much he likes it.

“Okay?” the boy asks, and Ruben nods fervently, moaning into the boy’s mouth. The boy’s grip on Ruben is so tight that Ruben’s barely holding his own weight.

Ruben’s tipsy, everyone in this house is a stranger to him but the friend who might not even turn up, and something about that combination makes him bolder than he normally might be.

“Tell me what to do,” he says, his face still so close to the boy’s that their lips brush together when Ruben speaks.

“What?”

“Tell me what to do. Just — whatever you want me to do.”

“On your knees,” says the boy, and it’s not a question. Ruben obeys, drops immediately to the ground, and his hands fumble at the boy’s belt. He gets the buckle undone and the boy pulls the leather through the belt loops with a rhythmic sound that makes Ruben wonder what the belt would feel like brought down against the skin of his back.

Ruben runs his hands up the boy’s thighs and lets them rest on his hips. He looks up and meets the boy’s eyes, waiting for instruction.

“Touch me.”

Ruben palms the bulge in the boy’s jeans, leaning forward to kiss it on impulse, and he feels the boy’s cock hardening underneath the fabric. His fingers feel clumsy as he tries to undo the buttons and the boy takes pity on Ruben, undoes his own fly and pushes both jeans and boxers down to the floor. His hand finds the back of Ruben’s head and he runs his blunt nails through Ruben’s hair, trailing along Ruben’s scalp and making Ruben shiver with anticipation. 

Ruben knows he’s properly tipsy now, that he had too much to drink too quickly, but he doesn’t know how to say that. Instead, he says, “Please.”

The boy makes a fist in Ruben’s hair and tightens it, hard but not cruel, pulling Ruben’s head back so that his throat is upwards and exposed. Ruben whimpers.

“You okay?” asks the boy, finding Ruben’s eyes.

Ruben nods, and the boy nods back, and then the boy guides Ruben’s mouth onto his cock. It’s not enormous but it’s big enough and Ruben chokes on it, gagging a little before remembering to open his throat.

 _Relax,_ he tells himself. _Just relax._

Ruben finds his rhythm and hollows his cheeks and sucks, letting the boy hold his head in place and thrust into Ruben’s throat. Ruben’s eyes fall closed and his mind empties and if he doesn’t think too hard about what came before this and what will come after, he feels almost calm.

The only warning that the boy’s about to come down Ruben’s throat is the way his fingers dig into Ruben’s scalp and the low, strangled noise he makes. Ruben barely has time to prepare and he squeezes his eyes shut, breathes as deeply as he can, is reminded how much he hates this part. He swallows once, twice, over and over, trying to keep the taste off his tongue.

When he’s sure the boy’s done, he lets the boy’s cock slide from his mouth, lowering himself to sit back on his heels. He’s breathing heavy and his mouth tastes bitter despite his best efforts and his head is full of static. He feels very far away from the world around him and everything is moving at the wrong speed, too fast and then too slow, and he reaches a hand out for the boy, looking for a kind comfort he doesn’t know how to articulate.

His hand makes contact with the boy’s thigh and the boy kneels down in front of Ruben, his jeans still around his ankles. It’s not a graceful moment for either of them and the harsh edges of Ruben’s mind make it even less so.

“Are you okay?” asks the boy, cupping Ruben’s cheek in an awkward, stilted gesture.

Ruben doesn’t know what to say and he turns his face into the warmth of the hand resting there. He tries to nod.

“Good,” the boy says. After a pause, he adds, “You’re really fucking good at that, you know?”

“Thanks,” Ruben says, voice as shaky as his body. _Hold me_ , he wants to say. _Stay with me. Tell me I’m okay._

The boy rubs circles into Ruben’s jaw with his thumb and slides his other hand through Ruben’s hair.

“I’m gonna go back out there, okay?”

Ruben nods again. It’s not okay but he doesn’t know how to say that, doesn’t know how to tell this stranger that he can’t be left alone, that being left here on the bathroom floor is humiliating and he doesn’t like that, he doesn’t want it. This boy doesn’t know him and doesn’t owe him anything.

The boy’s hands are gone from Ruben’s face and he’s standing up, pulling his pants back over his thighs and redoing his belt buckle. He looks so relaxed, so blissed out — his face is flushed, his movements slow, his breathing deep and contented.

“Come find me later if you want,” he says, and vanishes into the darkness of the party. He leaves the door slightly ajar and the noise it blocked when it was closed hurts Ruben’s ears. Ruben shuffles over to it on his knees and shuts it again, turns the lock. Sinks back into the relative quiet.

Dizzy and overwhelmed, Ruben stays on the floor. He curls up in a ball in the corner, his back pressed against the side of the bathtub, and the cold linoleum is soothing on his burning cheek. He wraps his arms around himself. He’s never in his life wanted someone to hold him as badly as he wants it right now.

He doesn’t know how many minutes pass before someone bangs on the door and he climbs to his feet, pulling his phone out of his pocket to figure out how to get home. His loneliness feels like abandonment, the taste in his mouth like punishment, the ache in his knees like shame.

***

Ruben’s twenty-six and he’s curled on his side, he’s on the floor of a warehouse in Jamaica and he thinks, _You wanted this._

The lingering pressure of a hand at his throat, the blood on his thighs from the electrical cord, the residual ache in his jaw: he can’t feel anything else. _Be good for me,_ says the echo of a voice he doesn’t want to remember. _Just be good for me._

For so many years, he wanted other people to take control, to praise him and cause him pain, and now someone has and he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop needing to claw his way out of his skin and tumble, raw and untouched, to the ground. _You got what you wanted_ , he tells himself, and blacks out.

***

Ruben’s twenty-seven, alone in his apartment in Washington Heights, and he’s learned that sometimes he can calm the panic by biting himself.

He discovers this at night, a sticky July night that won’t cool down, while he’s lying on his back on his shitty sofa and trying to draw comfort from the fan he’s aimed directly at his body. The old Ruben probably would’ve been reading or writing or thinking but the new Ruben can’t do those things. The new Ruben spends a lot of the time that he isn’t filling out online job applications or going to therapy lying still, staring at the walls or the ceiling. He’s learned that time is tidal, that it surges and retreats and never moves in a straight line. That the things he tries to bury will not stay in the past but will not leave it either, that instead they keep him trapped in a sleepwalker’s limbo, unrested and never awake.

It’s the heat, probably, that reminds Ruben of Jamaica, but before he can realize it’s reminding him of Jamaica it _is_ Jamaica. The scratchy upholstery of the couch doesn’t exist, the whirring sound of the fan doesn’t exist, and instead he can smell the hot musty scent of the dirt that billows up under Ian’s feet, can taste the metallic tang of his own blood, can feel in his bones the exact slant of light as it burns and stings his eyes.

And he’s not sure what makes him do it but suddenly he’s brought his own bicep to his mouth and his teeth are sunk into the muscle, biting and sucking like he’s trying to leave a bruise, and the pain is so sharp and so sudden that his mind clears, just enough. The room rights itself, becomes again a tiny one-bedroom in New York City, and his body is once more his own. The pain is his own. It belongs to him, it’s part of him, he cannot be separate from it and it can be nowhere but now.

He doesn’t want this. He tells himself, over and over, that he doesn’t want this, every time he wakes up so hard that it hurts and ends up jerking off in the shower, shoulders hunched and body contorted with shame. The Ruben who fantasized about pain, about being praised and used and bitten, is part of the old Ruben, and those things are off-limits now, they are a reminder of the price of wanting. The price of being the kind of person who needs to fall to their knees.

***

Ruben’s twenty-eight and he’s just spent half the night on the floor of Vanessa’s bathroom. He wakes up after the sun’s already bright and vicious and he stumbles into the kitchen, pulling a blanket off the foot of the bed and wrapping it around himself as he goes.

Usnavi has appeared sometime in the night, although he was not there when Ruben fell asleep, and he looks up from scrambling eggs when Ruben crosses the threshold. Ruben suddenly remembers hearing Usnavi’s voice saying _I got you too_ and realizes it wasn’t a dream.

“You’re awake!” Usnavi says. “Vanessa, go hug him, I don’t wanna burn these.”

Vanessa, who’s sitting on the floor with her back against the refrigerator and her knees drawn up to her chest, looks like she’s been crying. She gets to her feet and goes to Ruben, cups his face in her hands like it’s something precious she’s trying not to break.

“Can I kiss you?” she asks.

Ruben nods, and Vanessa does, wrapping her arms around him so tightly that it’s as though she’s worried he’s going to disappear. When she breaks the kiss, she rests her chin on his shoulder until he holds her in return. She goes a little boneless in his arms, letting him take some of her weight.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, and her voice is thick and hoarse. Behind her, Ruben can see Usnavi adding spices to the frying pan with a tense determination, as though he’s trying to pretend he’s not in the room.

“Let’s sit down,” Ruben says. “My head hurts.”

Vanessa lets go of him and he drops into one of chairs arranged around the little circular table. He picks up her half-empty cup of coffee and drains it — it’s too sweet but it clears his head a little bit and he massages the bridge of his nose with the heel of his hand.

“It’s okay,” he says eventually, and he means it.

“I don’t get that,” says Vanessa, who hasn’t sat down and who’s got her arms wrapped so tightly around her own waist that he’s surprised her hands aren’t touching in the back.

“I liked what we did last night. I like being hit. I like being choked.”

“But it went so wrong.”

There’s a clattering noise from behind them as Usnavi gets plates out of the cupboard.

“Yeah,” Ruben agrees. “It did. But it’s just — that’s just my brain, you know? I love doing scenes with you, and I love it when you’re in control, and sometimes I lose the plot.”

“Lose the plot?” Vanessa says. She’s relaxed a little now and she pulls out a chair, sits down across the table from Ruben.

“I forget where I am. I think I’m with Ian when I’m really with you. It’s not because you did anything wrong,” he adds quickly, when she opens her mouth and looks panicked. “It’s just — some of the things I like are some of the things he did. And I don’t want to let him take them away from me.”

Usnavi scoops eggs onto plates and carries them to the table, depositing food in front of each of them and sitting down in the third chair. He says nothing but puts his hand over Ruben’s, which is resting loose and open on the tabletop.  

“And it can be _good_ ,” continues Ruben, “when you do the same things he did.”

Vanessa blanches a little at this.

“Because I love you,” Ruben explains. “And I trust you. And if you hurt me because I want you to, the pain doesn’t belong to him.”

Vanessa’s eyes look overbright and she stands up, leans across the table, and kisses him full on the lips, letting her tongue slide into his mouth for just a moment. Their foreheads rest against each other and their breath mingles between them.

“Okay,” says Vanessa, and sits back down.

The three of them eat in silence for a while, but it’s a safe kind of silence. Finally, Vanessa asks, “So. What do you think about nipple clamps?”

Usnavi makes a strangled noise and nearly chokes on his last bite of egg. Ruben, laughing harder than he would have thought possible while lying on the bathroom floor the night before, thumps him on the back until there are tears in all their eyes.

*** 

Ruben’s twenty-eight and he’s with Vanessa in the darkened bedroom of his apartment, their clothes scattered across the floor and the bed a staggering mess. The sheets are snarled and damp with sweat, there are two different butt plugs and a bottle of lube within easy reach, and the only sound is Vanessa’s breathing. Ruben’s holding his breath — as always, part of him is dumbstruck by how lucky he is to be touching her and sometimes he worries that if he blinks it’ll all go away.

Vanessa’s propped up on her elbow, resting her head on her fist, and she’s trailing her free hand over Ruben’s nipples, pinching and squeezing. He’s on his back and he’s lightheaded with how much he wants her, with how much he wants this. 

“D’you want a plug again?” she asks, punctuating the question with a particularly vicious twist to his right nipple. He writhes and whimpers from the pain and then feels his eyes roll back into his head when the endorphins hit.

“Yes,” he says, barely getting the word out, and she taps on his knee to get him to spread his legs. He’s been thoroughly worked open already but she re-slicks her fingers anyway, sliding two of them inside him and crooking them until she finds his prostate. He nearly screams and she smiles at him, wide and suggestive, as she replaces her fingers with the plug. He squirms, trying to readjust, and she makes a _tsk_ ing sound.  

“Be still, please,” she says. “You can do it. You know how to be still for me.”

He tries his best to breathe, to slow his body, to let his muscles go slack.

“Want me to distract you?” she asks, sitting up all the way so that she’s bright-eyed and straight-backed next to him.

He nods, finding her eyes and holding them. He wonders if he looks as vulnerable as he feels, staring at her like this, needing her to reassure him and praise him and tell him what to do.

“Okay then,” she says. “I’m going to hit you. Do you want that?”

He closes his eyes automatically, as though cutting off one of his senses will stem the onslaught of arousal that’s hitting him like a wave.

“Fuck,” he says. “Fuck, Vanessa, yes.”

She hits him in the ribs first, her hand a loose fist and the impact nothing but a gentle thud, and he moans into it, melts into the white noise that fills his brain. He can’t do anything, he can’t think, and he whispers Vanessa’s name like a chant, or a prayer.

“Good?” she asks.

He bites his lip and arches his back, letting his ribs and chest search out her hands again.

“ _Yes_ ,” he says, and the word falls from his mouth again and again like knots in a rope.

“Roll over for me?” she asks him. She sounds calm but her voice cracks, just a little, on the last word, and Ruben knows she’s as wrecked as he is. Still drifting in the static, he turns onto his stomach, his cock hard and aching as it rubs against the bed beneath him.

Vanessa shifts until she’s kneeling over him, straddling his hips, and whispers, “Tell me to stop if you don’t want this.”

He shakes his head, his eyes stinging with tears he can’t explain. “Vanessa, please. Hurt me.”

“I will,” she says. “You’re so good, Ruben. You’re so good for me. I’m so proud of you.”

And then she begins to beat him and his entire world shrinks and expands at once. He can’t focus on anything but the dull thudding rhythm of her fists as they make contact with his shoulders, with his upper back, and the sharpness of that focus soon begins to blur into a release he hadn’t know he was capable of feeling. He’s in his body and out of it, flinching away from the pain and desperate for it, he can’t see anything but the inside of his eyelids and the blackness there explodes with color that spreads through every muscle in his body. All the fractured parts of himself are slotting together, slipping and settling into place, even as Vanessa takes him apart with her skillful, careful hands.

Her voice comes to him from a long way away and as soon as he hears it it’s the only thing he can hear. He needs her, he needs her to know what this is like, that she’s his whole world.

“ _Vanessa_ ,” he says, before he can process whatever it is she’s said. His eyes are full and he wants to see her. He tries to roll onto his back but his body is too heavy.

“Ruben. Ruben, I need your color. Can you give me your color?”

“Green,” he says, making it onto his side and finding her eyes with his. He needs her to _know._

“Do you want more?”

He nods and she grins and it’s a broad, wicked thing.

“Do you want me to fuck you?”

“Yes,” he manages. “But I want the pain too, Vanessa, I need it, _please_.”

“You’ve been so good, Ruben,” she says, running her hands over his sore back and up and down his side. “You can have both.”

He makes a choked sound and Vanessa smiles again, pushing on his chest gently to get him to roll onto his back. He whimpers as the places she’s hit make contact with the mattress and take his weight.

“Shh,” she tells him, nudging his knees with her hand until his legs spread and fall open. “You can take it for me, can’t you? You can take the pain for me?”

He thinks he nods but he’s so dizzy with arousal that he’s not sure. Her hands are slick with lube — when did that happen? — and she’s kneeling between his legs and working his cock, twisting from the wrist as she strokes up and down, slow and steady. He hears moaning and realizes that it’s his own, bucks up into her fist. Her free hand trails down to play with the base of the plug that’s still inside him.

“I’m so close,” he croaks, and she immediately stops everything. He whimpers.

“You can’t come yet, _hermoso,_ ” she says. “You’re gonna come while I ride you. You’re gonna wait and come when I ask you to.”

And with this she rises to her knees and straddles his hips again. There’s a condom on the bedside table and she grabs it, rips it open, rolls it on. Once it’s in place, she guides him with her hand and sinks down onto his cock and it’s so _much._ He throws his head back, knowing he’s exposing his throat to her teeth. She doesn’t disappoint and, as she settles herself fully onto him, dips her head down and bites his neck. It’s sharp and it’s such a different pain from the aching, throbbing pressure of her punches earlier that his brain feels like it’s short-circuiting. Every nerve is in use, he’s feeling everything it’s possible to feel all at once. Vanessa begins to rock her hips and there’s no way he can last, not like this.

“I can’t,” he says, nonsensically, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t wait, I can’t hold on.”

“You can,” she tells him. “You can because I want you to.” Her hips still and she’s nearly upright, her back nearly straight, bracing herself with her hands against his chest.

“Ruben,” she says, softly, considering his face. “I’d like to choke you while I fuck you. Is that okay? If you’re good I’ll let you come then. With my hands around your throat.”

Ruben’s immediate thought is _yes_ , because he wants it, he wants it so much that he thinks he might pass out with the strength of his need. But he also knows, dimly, that the last time Vanessa choked him he ended up dry heaving into the toilet all night. He knows how much it upset her and that’s what makes him hesitate, more than anything else.

She must see this in his face because she reaches for him, cups his cheek with her hand and rubs circles against the skin with her thumb.

“You can say no,” she reminds him. “You can tell me no and I’ll fuck you, just like this, and I’ll let you come. You can say no." 

“I want it, though,” he says, his voice so quiet he can barely hear himself speak. “I want it.” 

He watches her face as she bites her lower lip, eyes falling shut. She rocks her hips, almost involuntarily, and his cock throbs again.  

“ _Please_ ,” he adds.

“Okay,” says Vanessa, and she wraps both her hands around his throat. It’s light at first, barely any pressure at all, and then she squeezes just a little, keeping her eyes trained on his. There’s a part of his mind, a fearful and panicky part, that remembers a much crueler pair of hands and a much bluer pair of eyes, but for the first time, that part of his mind is far away, barely audible over the pounding of his heart in his ears. Vanessa’s eyes are dark, and kind, and she will never let anything bad happen to him. His eyelids fall shut and he relaxes into the pressure against his windpipe, listens to the rattling of his breath and feels the fear escape his body at the places where Vanessa’s skin meets his.

As her grip tightens — restrictive, but never enough to truly cut off his air — she begins to ride him in earnest, her hips working in smooth circular motions until his vision constricts and his eyes roll back in his head and his own hips are rocking in response, rolling up to meet hers. They find their rhythm and Ruben fights his orgasm as hard as he can, wanting to please Vanessa, wanting her to tell him how proud she is of him.

Vanessa’s keeping up a steady stream of praise, her voice husky and broken. “God, you feel so good, you feel so fucking good, do you know how what it’s _like_ when you make those noises, Ruben, do you know what it fucking _does_ to me.”

The pressure at his throat lightens and stutters and he opens his eyes as she releases his neck. Her own eyes are screwed shut and she’s reaching between them, rubbing her slick fingers against her own clit in a frantic rhythm.

“Please,” he says. “Please, Vanessa, let me see you come.”

Her head falls forward, her long dark hair tumbling over her shoulders and sticking to her skin, and she doesn’t change the pace of her hand as she touches herself. “Can you do something for me?” she asks.

He’s so fucking close that he barely manages a nod. Her face like this, open and racked with pleasure, is too much.

“Come exactly when I tell you to. Come exactly when I come.”

“Yes,” he says, and the hand that’s not pressed between their bodies clenches against his chest, nails digging into his skin. Vanessa rolls her hips, hard, and after a few more flicks of her fingers against her clit, she hisses, “ _Now_.”

Ruben lets go just as Vanessa gasps, falling forward and catching herself with a hand beside Ruben’s head. He’s coming so hard that the world goes black at the edges and he can’t tell which noises are his own and which are Vanessa’s and he’s not sure that anything in his life has ever felt this good.

Vanessa collapses on top of him and his arms wrap around her waist on instinct. She stays like that for not nearly long enough and, when she rolls off him, he makes a mournful noise at the loss of her weight.

Once she’s disposed of the condom and taken the plug into the bathroom to soak, she returns to the bed with a dry towel. He shifts sideways so she can lay it down over the dampened sheets and then curls up on top of it, shutting his eyes. He’s so tired, he doesn’t think he can move. 

Vanessa presses the rim of a water glass to his mouth and he lifts his head to drink, keeping his eyes shut. He makes a sound of thanks and lets his head fall back down against the mattress.

“Do you need anything else?” she asks, running a hand through his hair.  

He shakes his head and reaches for her until she puts the water down and lies down behind him so they’re spooning. They’re both shaking and she pulls him tight against her chest, aligning their bodies until they curve congruently against one another. She kisses his hair, over and over, whispering _I love you_ and _Te amo_ and _Querido, querido, querido_ so quietly that he’s not sure if she knows he can hear her. He falls asleep to the steady pulse of her heartbeat and the gentle metronome of her breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on Tumblr at [a-classic-fool](https://a-classic-fool.tumblr.com/) and I don't bite unless asked, so feel free to come yell about these nerds with me! Also, like most writers, I'm embarrassingly easily motivated by comments.


	3. Usnavi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This fic, which began as a little one-shot (working title “Vanessa and the Strap-On”), got entirely out of hand. Enjoy chapter three! I’ll be in the corner, considering my life choices.

Usnavi’s nineteen and he’s stumbled into something like a rhythm when it comes to running the store on his own. His heart aches in a daily, constant way, aches when he restocks shelves and when he makes phone calls to suppliers and when he hands customers their change. It aches most of all when he closes shop, pulls down the grate and climbs the stairs to the apartment above.

For years, he watched his parents run this same store and he wonders if they ever felt the nagging heaviness he feels now. They must have, at some point, when money was particularly tight, but Usnavi always had food and clothes and somewhere warm to sleep and if his parents were ever leaden with the weight of the world, they hid it from him. He doesn’t think he could hide his heart from anyone right now. After hours on his feet and hours of smiling, he has no more energy for masks. 

Usnavi locks the cash register as the sun through the grate casts crisscrossing shadows over the floor. He sits behind the counter with his chin in his hands and waits for Benny, who’s supposed to meet him here. Benny’s a good distraction, and a good friend — he doesn’t ask Usnavi how he’s feeling, just puts an arm tight around Usnavi’s shoulders and drags him to the park with a boombox.

Today, Benny is late. Usnavi paces the empty store for a few minutes and then sits at the foot of the stairs to his apartment, tracing shapes in the dust with the toe of his shoe. Usnavi’s spent many summer evenings in this exact spot, sprawled across these exact steps, and he doesn’t know if it’s comforting, this clarity of connection between the past and the present, or if it just makes him sadder, that once he was here with his parents and now he’s here alone. 

When he was ten, Usnavi inherited an old, scratchy tape recorder from his father and sang into it nightly, without fail, while his parents closed up. Some nights, his parents called him upstairs with him when they were done, but others they left him to entertain himself until the sun set completely and the stairway grew dark.

On those nights, Usnavi remembers watching his parents make their way past him and up to the apartment. He remembers, so vividly that it’s a physical pang, the way his father would wrap an arm around his mother’s waist, press a kiss to the top of her head and pull her tight against his side. He remembers his mother sliding a hand into his father’s back pocket in response and at that point he always looked away, feeling both safe and like he was seeing something he shouldn’t be.

And sometimes, when they thought he wasn’t looking, they stopped at the top of the stairs, just before entering the apartment itself, and stood facing one another, each of them resting a hand over the other’s heart. That, to Usnavi, became love — pressing your palm to the weariest places and finding comfort there. 

Usnavi hears his name from somewhere far away and realizes it’s Benny, calling to him from all of twenty feet away. Not so far after all.

“Comin’,” Usnavi calls back.

Benny, presumably sensing that Usnavi doesn’t want to talk, does the talking for both of them, keeping up a steady stream of commentary about the weather, the new graffiti on the side of the salon, the girl Benny’s been going out with, the way her hair looks in the sun, the way she dances, the way he isn’t sure what he’s feeling but he thinks it might be love.

And all of that — the smell of a girl’s perfume, the way the silver threads of a dress can catch the light of a dimly lit club — seems less important to Usnavi than finding someone who’ll walk up a staircase next to him and slide her hand into his back pocket. 

*** 

Usnavi’s twenty-four and he’s holding Vanessa’s hand, walking side-by-side with her down Second Avenue. They’ve both had a drink or two and they’re not drunk but they’re bumping into one another as they go, veering towards one another and away, hips connecting and ricocheting until their arms straighten and they’re connected only by the tips of their fingers. 

They’ve spent the evening on what Vanessa called a joke date and Usnavi called a proper date, taking the subway to the Upper East Side and sharing a bottle of champagne at the least expensive wine bar they could find.

“That was _extortionate_ ,” says Vanessa, who’s wearing her red dress and a pair of heels that, quite frankly, make Usnavi splutter if he looks at her legs for too long. The corner of her mouth twitches in a failed effort not to smile whenever she catches him staring.

“That’s the point,” says Usnavi. “It’s our anniversary.”

“It isn’t,” says Vanessa. “It’s our six-month anniversary, which by definition of an anniversary isn’t an anniversary.”

But she turns her head at an awkward angle to kiss his shoulder anyway.

They walk in silence for a while, communicating only with the rhythm of their footsteps and the occasional quiet, shared laugh at an overheard conversation.

“We _had_ to fire her,” says a woman walking in the other direction, holding her phone between her shoulder and her ear as she rummages in bag that costs more than Vanessa’s rent. “We can’t have the maid backing her _truck_ into my _Porsche_.”

The woman gives Vanessa and Usnavi a dirty look as she passes and Vanessa flips her off. Usnavi makes a strangled noise under his breath.

“You’re gonna get us, I don’t know — kicked out!”

“It’s a street. They can’t kick us out of the street.” She stops without warning and Usnavi crashes into her. She peers down the sidewalk in front of them, double checking something against the map she’s pulled up on her phone, and nods.

“So,” she says. “I have an idea.”

“I — okay. What?” asks Usnavi.

“Do you remember what you said to me last week?”

“I’m gonna need _so_ much more than that.”

“Think about it for a minute.”

Usnavi does, and then turns a deep tomato color in the middle of the street.

(It’s five days prior and they’re both naked, Vanessa sitting on top of him. Every time he makes a sound, she stops riding his cock and goes perfectly still.

“What do you fantasize about that you’ve never told me?” she asks, after he’s whimpered and she’s stopped moving in response. 

“Nothing,” says Usnavi, eyes closed in frustration. “Vanessa, _please.”_

“ _Nothing_?” she whispers, leaning over him so she’s supporting herself with a hand on either side of his shoulders. “Are you sure about that?”

He knows he’s flushed, he knows his pupils are blown, and he’s licking his lips every few seconds, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth every time. He knows he must look wrecked and _fuck_ , all he wants is for her to move her hips and clench down on him.  

“Um,” he says. He’s now chewing on his lip to distract himself from how achingly, blindingly hard he is, and his brain does not seem to be working properly.

“Yes?” she says.

“I kinda. I kinda want to be. Um. Fucked.”

Vanessa tips her head sideways and gives him an evil grin, her long hair falling forward over her shoulder and brushing against his neck. “By me?”

Usnavi nods.

“Anything else?”

“I like when you tell me I'm good. And when you tell me what to do.”

“I think we can manage that,” she says, sitting back and climbing off him so she’s kneeling on the bed next to him. She reaches for her shirt and begins getting dressed.

“Va _nessa_ ,” says Usnavi. “What are you _doing_?” On a whim, he adds, “I’ll be quiet for you, if you want me to,” and just saying it makes the bottom drop out of his stomach.

“Well,” she says, hopping off the bed to pull her panties back on. “We don’t have anything for me to fuck you with tonight.”

“We could do _other things_ ,” Usnavi points out sensibly, hauling himself into a sitting position and staring at Vanessa’s hips as she steps into her skirt. His mouth is dry and his hand spasms, twitching against his thigh 

“It’ll be more fun,” she says, “if you’re nice and frustrated for when we _do_ have something for me to fuck you with.”

Usnavi flops face-down onto the mattress and groans.)

“Okay, yeah,” Usnavi says, profoundly grateful that none of the passers-by making their way down Second Street can read his mind. “I remember.”

“If you’re still interested, I checked after dinner, and there’s a store a block away that should have what we need.”

“It probably won’t be open,” says Usnavi reflexively, although the thought of Vanessa fucking him is making him lightheaded there on the sidewalk.

“It’s open,” says Vanessa. She nudges him with her shoulder and her smile goes straight to her eyes. Given how she looks right now, bathed in the glow from the store windows and spotlit by the neighboring streetlamps, Usnavi would have done anything Vanessa wanted.

“Okay,” he says, and he’s barely aware of his mouth moving because he still can’t believe she’s there, still can’t believe she’s walking around the Upper East Side with him and feeling no shame.

She leads him by the hand down the block and through the door of a store called The Pleasure Chest. Once inside, she looks much less out of place than he does.

The shop is dimly lit, reminding Usnavi of an unusually sexual Italian restaurant, and the walls are a dark red, reflective and upfront. In amongst the shelves and racks of vibrators, dildos, clamps, whips, ropes, and a great many other things Usnavi couldn’t have identified if he’d tried, are several padded benches. Usnavi immediately makes his way over to one of them and sits down.

“You okay?” asks Vanessa, who’s holding a vibrator in the vague shape of a tongue up against her nose.

“This is a lot,” says Usnavi.

“We can go,” she says, putting the vibrator down. “If you’re uncomfortable — ”

“No,” he interrupts, “I’m not uncomfortable. It’s just. Like. A lot.”

Vanessa sits down next to him and noses at his cheek. “Yeah,” she says. “It is. Want me to pick something and bring it back here to show you?”

After forty-five minutes, they’re outside again and on their way home. Vanessa swings the bag in the hand not holding Usnavi’s and grins whenever she notices him looking around to see if anyone can tell what they’re carrying.

“No one knows but us,” she whispers into his ear as they find seats in the corner of the subway car.

“What if I don’t like it?” Usnavi whispers back.

Vanessa turns his head towards her with a hand on his jaw. “Then we won’t use it,” she says. “And I will keep the dildo for myself.”

Usnavi just barely stops himself from making a very undignified noise in public and sits on his hands the rest of the ride home.

Two hours and a lot of lube later, he’s on all fours in front of her on the bed and she’s got a hand on his lower back, pressing lightly whenever he forgets to arch it. She’s naked except for the harness and she’s so deep inside him that he can feel her hips against his ass. He pushes back onto her, forcing her deeper and fucking himself on her, and she leans forward, her chest flush against his back. She reaches around him and wraps her slick hand around his cock, working up and down his length until he’s shuddering and it’s almost impossible to stay upright. He feels his elbows getting weak.

“Please,” he manages. “ _Please_.”

“You can come,” she tells him, low and dangerous. She’s figured out how to thrust, more or less, after several failed attempts — “This is _not_ a motion I’m used to” — and her next thrust hits his prostate just on the downstroke of her hand. He’s pretty sure he blacks out when he comes. He’s pretty sure he forgets his name.

Vanessa pulls out and he collapses onto his side.

“ _Fuck,”_ he says.

“No shit.” She undoes the harness, puts the dildo in the bathroom sink, and returns to curl up behind him. He can feel the muscles in her thighs trembling from exertion. “That was — fuck, that was good.”

He nods. He wants to clean up — he feels sticky and wet in places he no longer wants to be sticky and wet — but he also wants to fall asleep, and the two impulses war it out in his head.

They stay like that, tucked up against each other and breathing in time with one another, until Vanessa stirs and props her head up on her elbow.

“Usnavi,” she says into his ear, her voice still ragged.  “Can I bite you? On your shoulder?”

He nods. He doesn’t even know why he does it — the idea of being bitten in and of itself isn’t particularly appealing — but the idea of Vanessa in charge, of Vanessa _taking_ charge, is indescribably so.

She lowers her mouth to the muscle between his shoulder and his neck and sets her teeth into it. She starts gently, just kissing and sucking, and this he likes — mostly pleasure, with the softest edge of pain. He knows that he’s theoretically too old for hickeys, but he doesn’t care — he likes being marked like that, likes being reminded of Vanessa’s attention and adoration every time he looks in a mirror. He makes a low, encouraging sound in his throat and she bites down harder and this time, the pain is sharp and concentrated and deeply unpleasant.

“Nope,” he says. “No no no _no_.” She stops immediately, freezes like a statue, as he pulls his shoulder forward and away from her mouth. He covers the place where her teeth were with his hand. It’s sore and it stings in an insistent sort of way.

“I’m assuming that didn’t feel good,” says Vanessa.

“It definitely didn’t,” says Usnavi, eyes screwed shut.

“Are you…okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s fine. I’m fine.”

She unfreezes and runs her hand up and down his arm, soft and slow, kissing the back of his neck until he relaxes. When his breathing has evened out again, she slides her arm around his waist and curls back up behind him.

“You don’t have to do this just because I want to,” she says. “Any of this. We have great sex already. It’s not like I’m unhappy or unsatisfied.”

“I mean,” says Usnavi, as the pain from the bite subsides and becomes a dull throb, “the fucking was great. Let’s definitely do that again. I just — I don’t like the pain. And I’m afraid there’s something missing for you, I guess.”

“I don’t think there is,” says Vanessa, pulling him tighter against her chest. “There are things that I’m into that you’re not into and that’s fine.”

“I don’t want you to resent me,” he says. It comes out so quiet that he’s not sure she heard him until she kisses the back of his neck again, right at the place where his hair starts growing.

“Usnavi,” she says. “I will never resent you for not wanting to do something you’re uncomfortable with.” She pauses, trailing the nails of one hand lightly up and down his chest. He shivers with his whole body, every hair on every inch of skin standing up at the sensation.

“Not to mention,” she goes on, “you just let me fuck you in the ass and tell you what a good boy you are. So I’m pretty fucking happy right now.”

He rolls over. “Yeah?”

“Better fucking believe it.”

He knows, in the grander scheme of things, that something like a strap-on isn’t particularly unusual. It’s not even particularly kinky, not like what Vanessa wants, and what Vanessa wants is probably _still_ pretty tame compared to much of what they saw in the store. But part of him wonders what it means that he liked what they just did so much. Being fucked and being ordered around were never things he pictured when he pictured sharing his life with someone, sharing himself with someone, sharing a staircase and a long day’s work with someone.

But then he thinks about Vanessa’s face, about the reassuring solid presence of her in the bed with him, and he can’t really bring himself to worry about it. He knows all too well that the people you love aren’t promised to you. This is good, this feels good, _they_ feel good, and nothing else matters very much. 

***

Usnavi’s twenty-five and the sun’s been down for hours, the bodega’s long since closed for the day. Ruben is sitting on the counter, ankles crossed and the book he’s reading spread open in his lap, while Usnavi finishes sweeping and tidying.

Every now and then, Ruben looks up and says, “ _Please_ let me help, Usnavi.” And every time, Usnavi shakes his head.

“No dice, Marcado,” he says. He and Vanessa have only been dating Ruben for about a month, and it’s all so new. He’d much rather have a cute boy stare at his ass while he sweeps and end up sweeping for longer than make his beautiful new boyfriend help with the chores.  

He and Ruben have made out — in fact, they’ve made out a _lot_ , and frequently in places where they were not supposed to be making out — and the three of them together have spent a truly magnificent amount of time breathless in someone’s bed, tugging at the hems of shirts and the waistbands of pants, letting their tongues slide into one another’s mouths and grinding feverishly against one another’s bodies. But he’s never had sex with Ruben — he’s never even seen Ruben without his usual long-sleeved sweater — and _Jesus_ , he wants to. He wants to so badly.

Usnavi dumps the contents of the dustpan into the trashcan and gathers the day’s receipts into an envelope, making notes in his ledger of what he sold. He hates this part — in writing, the numbers shift and move in front of his eyes when he’s tired, the lines they’re printed on don’t seem straight — but he can’t afford not to know exactly how much he’s made. When he’s done, he looks over at Ruben, whose concentration, unlike his own, is a fucking marvel. Usnavi suspects that a thunderstorm could be going on while Ruben read and Ruben would not so much as glance up from his book.

“Ruben,” says Usnavi. When Ruben, predictably, does not look up from his book, he repeats himself, slightly louder. “ _Ruben_.”

Ruben takes his eyes off the page at a deliberately maddening speed.

“You hollered?”

“I’m done,” Usnavi says.

Ruben gives him the tiniest of smiles, barely a twitch of his lips, but his eyes at just the right angle seem to glint.

“I’m not,” he says.

Usnavi knows exactly what Ruben’s doing and refuses to let himself be rankled. “I’ll guess I’ll have to go upstairs on my own then.”

“I guess you will,” Ruben concedes, licking his finger and turning the page of his book. The finger licking was unnecessary. Ruben never licks his fingers when turning pages. 

Usnavi takes several noncommittal steps towards the stairs and Ruben, who’s doing his best to pay Usnavi no attention, smirks in spite of himself.

Usnavi gives up.

“Fuck, Marcado,” he says. “Don’t think I’m above begging you to come make out with me.”

“Oh, I know you’re not above that,” says Ruben, although he finally shuts the book and sets it down on the countertop next to him.

“Well, _fuck_ upstairs then,” says Usnavi. He goes to Ruben, who hasn’t moved from his position on the counter, and puts one hand on each of Ruben’s knees, resting his palms there until Ruben uncrosses his ankles and lets his legs spread open. Usnavi moves in to stand between them and runs his hands up Ruben’s thighs, pausing to palm Ruben’s hips. Ruben’s staring at him with big, dark eyes and his lips are parted and he’s squirming a little under Usnavi’s hands as Usnavi draws circles with his thumbs over the denim covering Ruben’s cock. 

Ruben makes a whimpering sound and Usnavi leans in to kiss him, tilting his head up and and nearly going on tiptoes to reach Ruben’s mouth. He braces himself with one hand on either side of Ruben’s hips and slides his tongue into Ruben’s mouth — he loves Ruben like this, loves feeling him melt into Usnavi’s touch, loves the way he tastes and the way he wraps his legs around Usnavi’s waist so Usnavi can’t move away.

They keep kissing until Ruben’s leaning down, until he’s got one hand in Usnavi’s hair and the other at the back of his neck, pulling him as close as physically possible while Ruben’s still seated and Usnavi’s still standing. Usnavi’s getting hard just from this and he wraps his own arms around Ruben’s waist, his fingers sliding under the hem of Ruben’s shirt by accident.

He expects to feel smooth skin, expects to savor that feeling even as he’s hastily withdrawing his hand and tugging Ruben’s sweater back down, but he doesn’t. He can tell, in the few seconds his hand is under Ruben’s clothes, that skin there is raised and scarred.

Usnavi knows as soon as he does it that he shouldn’t have stopped kissing Ruben, shouldn’t have made it obvious that he’d noticed whatever is going on under Ruben’s clothes. Usnavi’s tongue pauses in its exploration of Ruben’s mouth and Ruben pulls back, hands flying to the place where sweater meets skin.

“Fuck,” says Usnavi. “Fuck, Ruben, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean — ”

“I know,” says Ruben, pulling his sleeves down over his hands and sliding sideways off the counter. “It’s fine. I should go.” His expression is odd and distant and he’s looking at something invisible over Usnavi’s right shoulder.

Usnavi doesn’t want to touch Ruben in case that makes it worse but he holds a hand out in front of him all the same, letting it fill the space between them.

“Hey, wait, no. You don’t have to go,” he says. “I fucked up. That was my fault.”

Ruben’s still not looking at Usnavi but he stops walking towards the door.

“If I show you,” he says slowly, “I’m not sure you’ll want to kiss me again.”

“You don’t have to show me anything,” says Usnavi. “We can, I don’t know — go upstairs and watch a movie. On separate sides of the couch. Or you can watch the movie in my lap fully clothed. Whatever you want.”

“No,” says Ruben. “No, I should show you. I’m not gonna explain, not right now, except that it’s part of why I panic all the time, but I should show you if we’re gonna keep doing this.”

Usnavi nods. “Okay. Yeah. You can show me. I’ll still want to kiss you.”

Ruben shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath and pulls his sweater up so his stomach and sides and back are exposed. He keeps his eyes closed and flinches when Usnavi hisses in spite of himself.

“ _Ruben,”_ says Usnavi. He doesn’t even know what could leave scars like these and here Ruben is, covered in them.

Ruben drops his sweater and when it’s fallen back into its usual position he looks smaller, somehow. His shoulders are up around his ears and his whole body looks tense, looks as though it’s collapsing in on itself.

Usnavi can’t stand it. He takes a slow, deliberate step towards Ruben, hands outstretched. “Can I touch you?” he asks.

Ruben, whose eyes are wide and a little wet, says, “Really?”

“If you’ll let me.”

“Yeah,” says Ruben. “Yeah, you can touch me.”

Usnavi cradles Ruben’s face in his hands and kisses him, long and deep, trying to say with his body all the things for which words seem totally inadequate. Ruben stays stiff for a moment and then relaxes, sags a little against Usnavi’s grip, slides his hands down Usnavi’s chest and hooks his thumbs into Usnavi’s belt loops.

“Upstairs,” says Usnavi, his voice cracking.

Ruben nods, still so close that his breath and Usnavi’s breath are the same. “Upstairs,” he agrees. 

Usnavi slides his hand into Ruben’s and tugs, not taking his eyes off Ruben’s face as he leads him towards the apartment.

“ _God_ , Ruben,” he says, “I wanna kiss you all night.”

“Me too.” The tips of Ruben’s ears are turning red and he looks up at Usnavi through his eyelashes in a way that makes Usnavi want to put his arms around Ruben and press his lips to every part of Ruben he can reach.

And Usnavi knows, as suddenly and blindingly as he knew with Vanessa, that this is love. Love is walking upstairs to the apartment above the bodega, without pain.

***

“You’re _bruised.”_

Usnavi’s twenty-six and it’s early, really obscenely early, and he’s just joined Ruben and Vanessa in the shower. It’s not really a big enough shower for three people, and now no one can move without touching someone else, but that, Usnavi will admit, was pretty much the point.  

Ruben turns around so that he’s facing away from the showerhead, but not before Usnavi has a chance to see the faded, yellowing bruises that mottle the already damaged skin of his back.

“Yes,” Ruben says. “Shampoo please.”

Usnavi leans around Vanessa, who’s massaging some sort of fragrant oil into her face, and grabs the shampoo bottle. He hands it to Ruben.

“Okay,” he says. “Lemme rephrase. _Why_ are you bruised?”

“Wanna take this one?” Ruben asks Vanessa. Vanessa, who is still massaging her face but in a way that indicates she’s mostly forgotten she’s doing it, shakes her head.

“Usnavi,” she says. “Why do you think?”

Usnavi stares at her.

“Usnavi,” she says again. “Too early.”

Ruben and Vanessa hate mornings. They both have to be up for work today and they both snoozed their alarms at least four times before dragging one another into the bathroom, leaning on one another for support and causing Usnavi to seriously consider throwing one or both of their phones across the room. 

Ruben splashes them both with droplets of soapy water as he rinses his hair under the spray. “Lemme at least get out of the shower before we have any serious conversations. I can’t do serious conversations when my mouth tastes like glue.” 

Usnavi does not think he has ever finished showering faster, at least not when his shower included two gorgeous naked people who were miraculously both allowing him to fuck them regularly.

When they’re all sitting in the kitchen, Usnavi fully dressed and Ruben and Vanessa still in bathrobes, Usnavi sets three mugs of coffee on the table and says, “Talk.”

Ruben drinks about half his coffee in one swallow and Usnavi would be offended if he weren’t so antsy.

“Sex,” says Ruben, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and then realizing there’s no napkin to wipe the back of his hand on. He flaps it around uselessly in the air until it dries.

“What, did you fall off the bed?” asks Usnavi.

“I hit him,” says Vanessa. “We had a rhythm going with it for a while.”

Usnavi, although he realizes that he would have had better luck with this conversation had he waited until everyone was properly awake, gapes at her, and at the nonchalance with which she mentions beating Ruben.

“Consensually,” adds Ruben. He finishes his coffee in another enormous swallow and stands up to pour himself another cup.

“And to the benefit of everyone involved,” says Vanessa. She’s got her hands wrapped around her own mug and is warming her nose by holding it inches from the surface of the coffee.

Usnavi pulls his feet up onto the chair and hugs his knees to his chest. He knows Vanessa and Ruben play different games when he’s not around, and he’s fine with that — he remembers his one attempt at letting Vanessa inflict pain and remembers also that it didn’t go well. He’s always assumed, though, that their games didn’t really go past spanking, maybe, or biting. He’s never heard either of them mention hitting, and he’s never seen the evidence of its occurrence before. 

 _Biting leaves marks too_ , he tells himself, but it still seems different. He can’t stop thinking that Ruben must have been bruised when he got back to the U.S., too, must have been bruised on the plane back from Jamaica. He can’t stop imagining Ruben going to sleep his first night home and trying to avoid putting weight on the worst of the damaged places. He knows — he _knows_ , he doesn’t have any doubts — that Ruben wanted Vanessa to hit him, as much as Vanessa wanted to do the hitting. He knows they love each other, and that they protect each other, and that he does not need to worry about the things he’s worrying about. But he also wants to press his palms to all the places where Vanessa’s fist made contact, as though with his touch he could bring some kind of comfort.

 _No one here needs comforting but you_. 

“Usnavi,” says Vanessa. Her voice sounds very distant and it startles him, makes his head jerk on his neck.

“Yeah,” he says. His voice sounds flat even to himself.

“You okay?”

He nods, and then reconsiders and shakes his head. “I just don’t get it.”

Ruben sits back down with his replenished mug.

“What don’t you get?” He pauses to take a gulp and then adds, “You know we do this kind of stuff. We’ve talked about it. I don’t see how this is different.”

“It’s not. And I do know. I just, seeing it — it seems really brutal. Those bruises seem brutal. And I don’t understand how you can _want_ that. After everything.”

“It feels good,” says Ruben. “And I trust Vanessa. She stops when I want to stop. She takes care of me.” It all comes out slightly rushed, as Ruben’s words always do when he’s trying to tell Usnavi and Vanessa them how he feels about them.

“You like it when I tell you what to do,” Vanessa says to Usnavi, into the quiet, her eyes not quite meeting his. “You like when I'm in charge. It’s the same idea.”

“I like making you feel good. You're not _hurting_ me.”

“And I like making Ruben feel good.” 

The silence is tense and it begins to curdle. Usnavi wants to do something to fix it but finds he has no idea what to say.

“I’m sorry,” he says eventually. “I’m just upset. It’s just early.”

“It’s fine,” says Vanessa. “I’m gonna go get dressed. We can talk about this more tonight.” She kisses the top of his head, albeit a little more brusquely than usual, before she deposits her mug in the sink and disappears into the bedroom.

Ruben stands up too. “It really is okay. It doesn’t have to make sense to all of us. We don’t all have to like the same things.” He smiles a crooked morning smile and adds, “That’s why there’s three of us.”

He leans over and tips Usnavi’s chin up with two fingers, bringing their mouths together. It’s chaste but it’s drawn-out, it’s unhurried, and it settles something in Usnavi’s chest.

“You really like it? You’re not just — I dunno, reliving things?”

“Yeah, I really like it. It feels fucking _incredible_.”

This, at least, is a language Usnavi understands. “And you still like when we do, um — other stuff? Stuff that’s not like that?”

“Yes. That stuff feels incredible too.”

Usnavi tips his head up for another kiss, which Ruben provides. Usnavi makes an undignified noise in the back of his throat when Ruben pulls away, citing a need for pants.

“Pants are overrated,” he calls after Ruben. Ruben snorts.

“Tell that to my students,” Ruben yells back.

Usnavi tries not to think about Ruben’s bruised back as he watches Ruben walk away, and finds that watching Ruben’s ass is a decent distraction. But there are things he does think about, as he falls asleep that night. He remembers Ruben on the counter of the bodega, his sweater riding up around his waist and his eyes full and overbright — he remembers the first time he had sex with Vanessa, remembers the way she sounded when she said, _You’re so good, Usnavi._ He thinks about Vanessa asking Ruben to get on his knees, and then he thinks about being allowed to watch while she does.

***

Usnavi’s twenty-six and it starts with a movie night, of all things. They’re sitting in a row on Ruben’s couch — or rather, they were at one point sitting in a row, now they’re mostly sprawled across one another in a pile of arms and legs — and Ruben’s complaining about the scientific inaccuracy of the movie they’re watching.

“What the _fuck_ ,” he says. “You can’t just use fucking _electroshock therapy_ and shock compounds off of brain receptors, that’s not how it fucking works! Your hypothalamus isn’t _surrounded on three sides by bone_! Who _wrote_ this shit?”

“Ruben,” says Vanessa. “I can’t keep track of the plot with you talking over it every five seconds.”

“There _is_ no plot!” Ruben wails, and Usnavi hides his head under a pillow with a dramatic groan.

“Shut _up_ ,” he says.

Eventually they give up on the movie — “This _offends_ me as a chemist and as a scientist in general,” says Ruben — and Usnavi and Vanessa, who are sandwiching him in their sofa pile, take turns kissing the corners of his mouth to calm his outrage. It works, and it works well, and soon Vanessa’s sliding her tongue into Ruben’s mouth while Usnavi undoes Ruben’s fly and slips a hand down the front of Ruben’s jeans. He cups Ruben’s cock and Ruben pushes his hips up into Usnavi’s hand, his back arching and his eyes tight shut. 

Vanessa stops kissing Ruben and, as Ruben makes a noise of discontent at the loss of her mouth, shifts so she’s kneeling on the couch and watching Ruben and Usnavi. Her back is perfectly straight and her eyes are wide and attentive.

“Usnavi,” she says, and Usnavi’s prepared to swear that there’s electricity crackling across the surface of her body. “Get on your knees.”

Usnavi stares at her.

“On the floor, in front of Ruben. Facing him.”

Ruben’s eyes are wider than Vanessa’s as he focuses them on Usnavi. He takes a deep, shaking breath. 

“You want to?” he asks Usnavi. “No pain.”

Usnavi drops to his knees on the carpet in answer.

“Good,” says Vanessa. “Ruben, do you want him to suck your cock?”

Ruben makes a sound that might be a word.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes,” Ruben manages.

“Take your jeans off then,” Vanessa says, and he arches his hips up off the couch to slide his pants and underwear down around his knees. He lets Usnavi pull them the rest the way off and toss them away. 

“You gotta get undressed too, Usnavi. I’m the only one who gets to wear clothes.”

Usnavi pulls his shirt off over his head so fast that he nearly gets tangled in it and hops back and forth from one foot to the other in his haste to get his pants off. He stands there, naked, and lets Vanessa look him up and down.

“I didn’t say you could stay standing,” she says, but she’s grinning wide and mischievous. He goes back down on his knees and looks at her, waiting for instruction.

Vanessa nods at him and he kneels with his torso flush against the couch and his hands gripping Ruben’s thighs. Ruben’s semi-hard and already breathing heavily and he and Usnavi make eye contact, holding it for a long moment before Usnavi lowers his head and takes Ruben into his mouth. Ruben moans and his whole body goes rigid, arching towards Usnavi like a magnet.

Vanessa inches closer to Ruben and plucks at the hem of his shirt as well.

“Is this okay?” she asks, in a softer, kinder voice. Ruben nods, his eyes screwed shut and his breath fast and shallow, and he raises his arms over his head so she can pull the shirt off. She drapes it over the back of the couch and sits back down to watch them.

After a moment, she stands and steps out of her skirt. She takes Ruben’s wrist and guides it until his fingers are against her clit.

“You know what to do,” she says. Ruben whimpers incoherently and does as he’s expected, smearing the wetness from her cunt over her clit and rubbing it in tight, steady circles. Her eyelids flicker and her breath stutters but she gives no other signs that she so much as notices what he’s doing.

“Usnavi,” she says. “Less watching, more sucking.”

Usnavi tears his eyes away from her and shuts them, hollowing his cheeks and opening his throat to take as much of Ruben as possible. Ruben’s having trouble holding back his thrusts, Usnavi can feel his hips shifting and squirming, and Usnavi gags, his eyes water, somehow that’s part of the appeal. He’s doing something for Ruben, he’s doing what Vanessa wants him to do, he’s making them happy, nothing else matters.  

“Can he come down your throat, Usnavi?”

Usnavi tries to nod but finds it difficult to move his head without ruining his rhythm.

“Tap the couch if it’s okay,” says Vanessa. Usnavi taps the couch with two fingers and the sound Ruben makes is like a symphony. He wishes he could capture it somehow in case the memory of it fades with time.

He hears Vanessa shifting on the cushions above him. “Go on, Ruben,” she’s whispering. “You’re so good, you’re so beautiful, you’re so good. Come down his throat for me.”

Usnavi braces himself and swallows reflexively as soon as Ruben comes. It’s bitter and thick and he’s gagging on it in earnest now and suddenly Vanessa’s kneeling next to him, stroking his hair

“You’re okay,” she’s saying, in the low gravelly voice that she knows makes him dizzy. “You’re doing so well. Just a few more seconds, I’ve got you. Good boy, Usnavi.”

When Ruben’s finished, Usnavi pulls back and stares up at Ruben’s face, which is flushed and open. Ruben’s expression is disbelieving.

“ _Jesus_ ,” says Ruben, voice shaking.

“Was it okay?” asks Usnavi, registering dimly that his knees are hurting.

Ruben opens his mouth, shuts it again, and nods fervently, letting his eyes fall shut again. Vanessa chuckles.

“What d’you think, Usnavi? You wanna come too?” she asks. 

“Yes.” His voice is hoarse and his jaw aches a bit and none of it is as important as what Vanessa’s saying right now, as Vanessa, as Ruben, as both of them there beside him. 

“All fours then,” she says.

He obeys, his hands taking some of the weight from his sore knees, and Vanessa disappears momentarily into the bedroom, returning with lube. She kneels down behind him and begins to work him open, one slick finger at a time. Ruben curls up on his side on the couch to watch, brushing his hand over his cock every now and then and wincing because he’s still too sensitive.

Vanessa does not rush things and by the time she’s decided he’s ready to be properly fucked, he’s got lube running down the backs of his thighs and he thinks he might cry with how hard he is.

“Ruben,” she says. “Come here, please.”

Ruben climbs off the couch and joins her behind Usnavi. 

“If I give you a dildo,” she says, “do you think you can fuck him with it for me?”

Ruben apparently nods, because in a few moments Usnavi feels the head of the dildo that goes with Vanessa’s strap-on. He tries to push back onto it, babbling a string of words that might be in English and might be in Spanish and might be in no language at all, but Vanessa puts a hand on his hip.

“No,” she says. “Stay still.”

Usnavi’s entire body is shaking with the effort but he goes as motionless as he can, waiting. Ruben slides the dildo inside him and begins to fuck him with it, slowly at first and then faster, working up to a steady, driving rhythm. Usnavi almost screams.

Vanessa leaves Ruben on his own and comes around to sit in front of Usnavi. Propping herself up against the couch, she begins to touch herself, finding Usnavi’s gaze and holding it as she does so.

“You can touch yourself too, if you want,” she says, while she fucks herself with her fingers. “You’ve just gotta hold yourself up with one arm.”

Usnavi wraps his right hand around his cock almost immediately, his left arm trembling at the elbow and threatening to give out, and he works himself in time with Ruben’s thrusts, in time with Vanessa’s fingers. The corners of the world go dark as the onslaught of sensation drives everything else out of his mind.

“Whenever you’re ready,” says Vanessa. She’s still watching him but her breath isn’t even anymore, her composure is nearly gone, she’s inhaling sharp and quick every time she crooks her fingers inside herself.

Usnavi holds on barely a minute longer. When he’s finished, he lets Ruben pull the dildo out before looking to Vanessa. She comes over to him and puts her arms around him, pulling him nearly into her lap.

“Shh,” she says. “It’s okay.”

“I know,” he says. “I just don’t think I can support my own weight.” He tries to laugh but he’s too boneless, laughing takes too much energy. He curls up against her and shuts his eyes.

She holds him for a minute longer and then says, “Come on. Up.” She helps him up onto the couch with her and leans back against one of the couch’s arms. She situates herself and then gestures for him to lie down between her legs. He rests his head against her collarbones and she presses a kiss to his hair.  

“You too, _querido_ ,” she says, smiling at Ruben. Usnavi takes the hint and spreads his own legs, letting Ruben settle between them. Ruben’s head falls back onto Usnavi’s chest and Usnavi puts his arms around Ruben, hugging him from behind and letting his hands rest on Ruben’s stomach. After a few moments like this, each of them stroking whatever skin is within reach with lazy, heavy hands, their chests all begin to rise and fall in unison.

“Shower,” says Ruben eventually. Usnavi nods, brushing the top of his head against the underside of Vanessa’s chin as he does so.

They stand up slowly, stretching their arms and arching their backs like they’re yawning, and stagger into the bathroom. Nobody wants to wait their turn and they all crowd into the shower stall at once, standing still under the water and letting it run in rivers over their faces, into their mouths, down their backs. 

They dry one another off, rubbing one another’s hair and wrapping towels around one another’s shoulders. It takes much longer than strictly necessary, largely because they all keep stopping to stand in each other’s arms. Ruben leans into Vanessa when she gets her arms around him, draping his own arms around her shoulders and turning his face into her damp neck. Usnavi, in turn, stands behind Vanessa and runs his hands through her hair and over her upper back, eventually wrapping his arms around her waist so that his clasped hands are pressed between her stomach and Ruben’s.

He’s so tired that even this thoughts seem slow, syrupy and elongated in his head. The steam from the shower has obscured the mirror over the sink so that he can’t see their reflection, but he knows exactly how they look, standing like this. He knows exactly how dark and deep Vanessa’s eyes get when she’s holding Ruben, knows the set of her mouth when she’s feeling so much that it’s uncontainable. He knows, too, how Ruben’s whole body relaxes when he buries his face into her neck, knows how he holds on as tight and trusting as a child. What Usnavi doesn’t know is whether the droplets of water running down his own face are from his hair or his eyes, and he catches one on his tongue. It’s salty.

He presses his lips to Vanessa’s shoulder and it feels rapturous, feels new and fragile even as it’s the most familiar thing in the world. He knows so very deeply that this could all fall apart tomorrow, but he knows also that it won’t, and somehow, for the first time he can remember, the certainty of one doesn’t contradict the certainty of the other. And maybe it’s not a hand in his pocket on the way up a staircase — maybe it’s better than that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is actually a Pleasure Chest on Second Street in NYC, and the conversation Usnavi and Vanessa overhear about the maid and the Porsche is stolen straight from a very wealthy family I used to know. Also, Ruben’s complaints about the movie are borrowed from my neuroscientist friend, as they were her reaction to Do No Harm. (I don’t know how she made as far into the supercut as she did, tbh.)
> 
> I'm on Tumblr at [a-classic-fool](https://a-classic-fool.tumblr.com/) and I don't bite unless asked, so feel free to come yell about these nerds with me! Also, like most writers, I'm embarrassingly easily motivated by comments.


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